Central Valley Central hires middle school principal

The Central Valley Central School District has a new middle school principal.

At a school board meeting Monday night at the Ilion High School, board members unanimously approved the appointment of Melissa Hoskey to the principal position at the new Gregory B. Jarvis Middle School.

The Central Valley Central School District has a new middle school principal.

At a school board meeting Monday night at the Ilion High School, board members unanimously approved the appointment of Melissa Hoskey to the principal position at the new Gregory B. Jarvis Middle School.

The salary for the position could not immediately be learned.

“I think the thing I'm most excited about is the opportunity to build a true middle level program,” Hoskey said. “One that is truly developmentally responsive and appropriate to the needs of middle school students and families.”

Hoskey currently sits as the middle school principal in Dolgeville, a position she said she'll be resigning from effective June 30.

The new Central Valley school district will be comprised of two elementary schools — Fisher Elementary in Mohawk and Barringer Road Elementary in Ilion — that will house kindergarten through fourth-grade students, a middle school that houses fifth through eighth grade in Mohawk and a high school for ninth through 12th grade in Ilion.

The district had to hire a middle school principal, since both Mohawk and Ilion school districts previously had junior/senior high schools.

District Superintendent Cosimo Tangorra Jr. said he's very excited about having Hoskey on board.

“She's very familiar with the fifth-through-eighth (grade) configuration,” he said. “I would certainly say her experience as a fifth-through-eighth (grade) administrator strengthened her candidacy.”

Hoskey said she has been with the Dolgeville school district for 11 years, and has been the Dolgeville Middle School principal for the last six, having built it from the ground up.

She hopes to bring more exploratory and travel curriculums, which she implemented in Dolgeville, to the new district.

“The exploratory curriculum will provide opportunities for students to identify strengths, as well as address current needs,” she said, adding that the travel curriculum will take students to New York City, Boston and Philadelphia to expose them to the larger world.

In other business Monday:

•The Central Valley school board also unanimously accepted and recognized the Ilion-Mohawk United Teacher's Association as the school district's union. The union includes all certificate and licensed professionals, from teachers and teachers' assistants to nurses and counselors.

•Tangorra said he anticipates at the next meeting July 8 that he will have a lease agreement for the Remington Elementary school building in Ilion between the school district and the Herkimer-Fulton-Hamilton-Otsego BOCES.